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Saturday, April 15, 2017

Judy Katz-Levine is an internationally published poet who has authored two full-length collections - Ocarina (SARU) and When The Arms Of Our Dreams Embrace (SARU). Her most recent chapbook is When Performers Swim, The Dice Are Cast (Ahadada). Her poems have appeared recently in Blue Unicorn, Ibbetson St., and Salamander.

Mississippi John Hurt

I would desire the hands of Mississippi John Hurt, the fingers
just slightly bent and with a touch of arthritis, though he
has spent a life-time caressing that gentle guitar, calling
to his folks you got to travel that lonesome road all by yourself
and the humbleness of his voice, just a touch of a rasp, eyes
that know far more than the eyes of a scholar, glancing up at the
camera
now and then only now and then, it isn't really trains one hears
in the blues guitar, it may be a walk with a grandchild down
by the river, or the grace bestowed after singing “Amazing Grace”
in the church near the homes of cousins getting ready to go out
and toss a baseball to the sky. I would desire, as I age, the fingers
of Mississippi John Hurt, which symbolize a life lived without
greed, without any malice whatsoever, any grab to power, and the
unearthly gentleness in his voice, yes, I would desire that.

Friday, April 14, 2017

Nicholas Kristof, the liberal columnist
for the New York Times, ran a poetry contest recently asking
for poems about President Trump. He then printed the winners.

Here is one he chose: “If God has
made men in his image/Please explain our new President’s visage.”
The poem continues with the rest of the limerick. Apparently clever,
rhymed limericks is what Mr. Kristof thinks of as good poetry and Mr.
Kristof is a well-educated person.

In a recent article in The Atlantic,
a well-meaning English teacher laments the
fact that he doesn’t teach poetry in his classes; he would like to
if only he had time. I taught high school for a number of years and I
was surprised to learn that few of my colleagues taught poetry in
their classes. They confessed they didn’t understand the poetry in
The New Yorker and didn’t know what made poetry good
anymore. Instead they read novels and memoirs and drama in their
classes and on their own.

I bring this up to point out that
poetry today is kind of a mess. There isn’t much agreement on what
poetry is. Instead there are many different types of poetry or
schools of poetry, created by universities and academics and beyond
those schools, there is poetry outside the academy and beyond that,
there is poetry that is popular with readers and fans. There is also
rap, and spoken word. There are sites like “Hello
Poetry” where people post poetry that is shared. “I love poetry/
an easy way to express/ my innermost thoughts.” Then there are
rhymed religious poems read by funeral directors and poems written by
best men at weddings. That is, there is an immense range, and quite
a divide between what the public thinks of as good poetry and what
the academy considers good poetry. The latest trend of blackout or
erasure poetry is, on the one hand kind of interesting, on the other,
a sign of creative bankruptcy.

In the last twenty years MFA Programs
have surged and multiplied (hundreds of
programs and thousands of yearly grads) and have become more
academic. In fact, many writers who get MFAs now go on to get PhDs.
In any case, academics, when they can, aim to control and define the
arts. This happened with fiction back in the 1970s and 80s, but by
the 90s, the public got fed up with all those post-modern
pseudo-intellectual novels full of narrators talking about the novel
and novels with multiple endings or with no endings at all and
fiction returned to what it does best: telling stories that are
well-written because those are the stories that sell and get made
into movies.

Unfortunately, poetry doesn’t sell
and doesn’t get made into movies. Poetry is more like painting and
sculpture except it doesn’t look so good on your wall or in le
jardin. But since there are so many MFA Programs, publishers
figured out that they could sell books of poems to all those MFA
grads. At the same time publishing and printing have evolved so that
publishers can print on demand and no longer have to invest in a few
thousand copies of a book before putting it on sale so that it is
much easier now to get a book published by a small, independent press
or even to publish it yourself. The result is that we have thousands
of books flooding the market. Yet there are few critics of poetry who
have been able to define the poetry of our age. In fact, for the most
part, no one even criticizes poetry. Instead, people just write
positive reviews of poetry that they like. This creates an odd
situation where there are a number of poets who write prose that is
merely broken into lines. And there are poets whose poetry really is
aimed at an academic audience. The T.S. Eliot’s of our day.

Martha Rhodes is a prominent figure in
the landscape of contemporary poetry. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence
and in the MFA Program at Warren Wilson College; she is the Director
of Four Way Books in New York. Her new book, The Thin Wall,
has been published by Pittsburg Press. It is a slim volume of 53
pages divided into three sections, each with a number of poems,
usually one to a page, with no titles. The sections are: (Burden of
Inheritance), (Yard Fire), and (Looking Down). Those section titles
are in parentheses. Why are they in parentheses? It seems a bit
self-conscious, doesn’t it? Here is the first poem:

There are apples,

buckets of

and heads wet from the dunking.

A witch ‘round every corner.

Ladders.

Jury and judge.

A pond of bodies bobbing, condemned.

And nineteen nooses wait.

That seven-gabled house.

Girls run the streets accusing

the accused. In Salem Village,

Goody Proctor bears her child in jail.

Our party pays to tour the next grey
house.

This is the most successful poem in the
first section. This is our inheritance here in New England: the
witchcraft and the hangings. Throw them in the pond to see if they
float and if they do, they must be witches! The narrator sees this in
her mind as she is on a tour. There’s wit in the last line—that
we should pay to see this past of ours. And the self-conscious use of
language shows up again. Why “buckets of” as a separate line
rather than: There are buckets of apples. The off-rhyme with judge is
there either way. Why isn’t it titled “That seven-gabled house”
rather than insinuating that line in the middle of the poem awkwardly
just to set up the last line?

Other poems in the first section are
not so resonant. One poem begins: “The air was heavy with blood.
/The boys washed off in the Merrimack.” That’s a little too heavy
handed. So too another poem that begins: “Both of us under one boy
or another./That’s how we spent our senior year.” That sounds
like the beginning of a Chelsea Manning confession in Vogue. I
don’t actually believe that anyone spent her senior year under one
boy or another. Here’s how another poem begins: “Boys, girls,
some of them siblings,/spawning in bathtubs all over town./ Drown
them?” It sounds like The Beans of Egypt Maine where kids
crawled under the porches and no one knew to whom they belonged.
There’s a kind of condescension at work here, assuming personas
that do not ring true.

The second section is called (Yard
Fire). It is about relationships. The first poem is about loss:

A crow at my mouth.

The bread from me

it stole. I felt

like a flour sack,

pecked, consumed,

scattered. Enough dust

to dust. You, just gone.

That certainly captures the feeling of
devastation when someone dies—the hour of lead, Emily Dickenson
called it. Of course Emily’s poems were written before God died.
Now there is no recourse. Nice sequence at the end of the poem with
all that assonance.

The last section is called (Looking
Down). In a couple of poems the narrator is in fact looking down at
another or another’s body. There’s humor in this section. One
poem begins: “Your dog’s dinner. /What you feed the chickens.
/The mud at the bottom of the Charles. /I’m what washes up on the
Merrimack’s shore.” The poet is personifying all that’s
rejected and cast off. “I’m everyone’s former friend. /I’m
his former wife.”

In the final poem
of the book, the title comes up: “Nothing is the thin wall of glass
(as thin as skin)/ just over there…nothing grabs us all, good or
bad, boy/girl popular, un-, you…” So, when you read that,
you might agree, Yes! It really does. Or you might not. Apparently,
the publishers at Pittsburg Press think, Yes! “Nothing” separates
and gets to us all. But can the word “nothing” when used as the
subject of a sentence have agency? “Something there is that doesn’t
love a wall…” Frost said and maybe Rhodes is playing off the
Frost line.

There’s clearly an aesthetic and a
worldview at work in these poems and if you identify with her
sensibility, you will enjoy them. Martha Rhodes is widely published
and, by just about any measure, quite successful as a poet. The fact
that University of Pittsburg Press and a number of highly respected
magazines publish her work is testimony to a particular type of
poetry, “furious and viral,” Susan Wheeler calls it although I
don’t know where these poems would ever go viral. There’s a
psychic distance between the poet and her subjects that undermines
her authenticity. Rick Barot says, “demanding as they are
beautiful.” Beauty, and the appreciation of it, seems pretty rare
in this collection.

In
a recent interview in The
Paris Review, Ben
Lerner talks about a problem he sees as endemic to poetry.

The
main demand associated with lyric poetry is that an individual poet
can or must produce both a song that’s irreducibly individual—it’s
the expression of their specific humanity, because it’s this
intense, internal experience—and that is also shareable by
everyone, because it can be intelligible to all social persons, so it
can unite a community in its difference. And that demand… is
impossible.

Of
course it is not impossible. It is difficult, particularly today in
our fragmented world. Whitman said, “to have great poets, there
must be great audiences.”

We seem to be in a
transition period for poetry. Here’s hoping that the recent
popularity of writing, reading and performing poetry leads to a
better sense of what good poetry is and what it is good for. Literary
magazines call for poetry that pushes the boundaries; we would be
better off with poetry that makes connections with tradition but
reflects our age. Too much of what appears in our literary magazines
today works too hard to break with traditional poetry and results in
either not being poetry at all or in being self-conscious and awkward
under the auspices of the experimental. Maybe a few great poets will
create great audiences.

Monday, April 10, 2017

Susan
Tepper: Your new poetry collection ‘Walking Toward Cranes’
(Glass Lyre Press) involves a personal illness and what it took to
walk away from that segment of your life. Because our lives are, in
a way, crafted like novels. Did you start these poems during the
illness stage or after?

Amy
Small-McKinney: Thank you Susan for this question. Before answering,
your assertion that our lives, in a way, are crafted like novels,
fascinates me because I am not a novel writer, though I love reading
them. I would have no idea where to begin! And I suspect if I did
try to write a novel, it would jump in and out of the present to
other times because my brain, especially while writing poems, works
that way. I believe that I don’t know how to write a linear
narrative; it is not how my mind works. Having said that, while
putting ‘Walking Toward Cranes’ together, I did begin to see the
pattern and the sections. In other words, they emerged after the
poems were gathered and organized.

ST:
Also being a poet, myself, I understand what you are saying here.
It’s almost an organic thing, the way the life organizes the work
without our conscious approval.

ASM:
I wrote many of the poems from diagnosis through treatment and then
recovery from treatment. They began the day of my suspicious
mammogram and ultrasound. The poem, Flying
Low,
was written on the ride home. I remember driving close to my home
when a flock of tiny birds swooped in front of my car. I remember
pulling over and a poem was emerging. I remember rushing home and
writing the poem. I knew it was about the suspected breast cancer.
From then on, I wrote and wrote, Susan, with no thoughts of
publishing or a book. I wrote for my life. During the chemotherapy,
there was a very dark period when I didn’t write much, but even
then, when able, I would let anything that needed to be said, just be
said. I never thought these would become a book. The other poems
were written shortly before or shortly after treatment and seemed to
fit.

ST:
Flying
Low
is indeed a poem that foreshadowed an overwhelming event in your
life.

You
wrote: “…One tried to talk to me. / If I listened, I would know
he is tired. / Inside of me, there is a swarm, / surplus only heat
will destroy. / …”

Of
all the types of writing, it’s my belief that poetry lives closest
to the soul or heart or whatever term people use to explain their
deepest core selves.

ASM:
I agree, but also hesitate to agree because I imagine all writers tap
into something below the surface to unearth their stories or poems. I
had a friend, a novelist, a mystery writer, who talked to me often
about her process and how painful it was for her to find out her
characters, no matter how different they seemed, at first blush, from
her, ended up having so much of her in them, including things she
preferred not to think about. It is what honest writing is about. I
tell my students that they can write about a tree or a car or a
blueberry, and there will be something of themselves lurking in that
tree, car, or blueberry, something that needs to be said. But for
me, poetry is everything. I know that sounds corny, but poetry is
where I find out what I am feeling and thinking. It is the safest
place in the world for me, despite the fear of what might be said. I
just finished reading a book by the poet, May Swenson, and so many of
her poems were about nature, but also about wanting to be “naked”
in poems as she could not be in life. But, yes, poetry does come from
that part of myself I could not otherwise hear. I listen hard to it.

ST:
That is the ultimate way to write, whether it’s poetry or novel or
stories. Close to the bone without the awareness. I can’t imagine
story-boarding a novel though many successful novelists do just that.
For me it would take away the joy of the journey. Will there be
clouds? Will we reach an ocean? Once you’re locked in, the art
goes out. You’re walled into structure.

There
is much more here than the literal interpretation, though that in
itself is almost lush despite the intention of the poem. You notice
I say intention of the poem (not the poet).

Being
Something Else #2
follows in the book and is vastly different. A much more optimistic
view of things despite the illness still present. It begins: “Fruit
carried to our daughter. / Bananas, green. / When brown with
pointlessness, / they are rich with tumor
necrosis factors.
/ …”

ASM:
Susan, you selected two poems I have difficulty talking about! You
rascal! Of course, I have difficulty talking about most of my poems.
I can talk at length about poetry by others, but sometimes I feel as
though my own work is a mystery to me. Or perhaps, I keep them a
secret even from myself. & yes, I do notice the “intention of
the poem.” Thanks.

The
poem’s intent, I think, is to talk about isolation, fear of loss,
and the need to return to the world. I can tell you that I recognize
the details. For twenty-five years, we lived in an old and drafty
house before moving into an apartment. We lived in that house during
my cancer. My chemo treatment was smack in the middle of the worst
winter in years; even the clinic needed to close for a few days. At
some point, my husband was also ill and I was afraid, I am sure. I
remember taking a train to the city on a clear day and feeling a
freedom I hadn’t felt during my treatment and during that winter.
Apparently, it was not possible to write that as a narrative poem.

Being
Something Else # 2
came about, in part, because a dear poet friend of mine suggested I
write a series. It never became a series, but it created this second
poem. I remember seeing someone on a train (I live beside a train and
love trains) carrying fruit. I imagined carrying fruit to our
daughter, again. I read somewhere that those brown bananas I don’t
eat have a component, tumor necrosis factor, and that tumor necrosis
factor might prevent
or fight cancer.I
don’t know, but it seems that the poem is trying to talk about a
kind of acceptance, maybe acquiescence, but a return to life. But
there is something else. The speaker moves along the same track as
the tumor necrosis factors, but also as the train where there are
morning glories nearby with their mouths opened, almost in song.
This is life, isn’t it? We cannot do anything but move along.

Susan Tepper, an award-winning writer, has been at it for twenty years.
Six books of her fiction and poetry have been published, with a seventh
book, a novella, forthcoming in the fall of 2017. FIZZ her reading
series at KGB Bar, NYC, is sporadically ongoing these past nine years. www.susantepper.com

Sunday, April 09, 2017

Helen Bar-Lev was born in New York in 1942. www.helenbarlev.com
She holds a B.A. in Anthropology, has lived in Israel for 46 years and
has held nearly 100 exhibitions of her landscape paintings, 33 of which
were one-woman shows. Her poems and artwork have appeared in numerous
online and print anthologies. Six poetry collections, all illustrated
by Helen. She is the Amy Kitchener senior poet laureate, was nominated
for the Pushcart Prize in 2013 and is the recipient of the Homer
European Medal for Poetry and Art 2016. Helen is Assistant to the
President of Voices Israel. She lives in Metulla, Israel.

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Last Night at the Wursthaus by Doug Holder

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Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur : 1974 to 1983 by Doug Holder

(To order click on picture) “Doug Holder is a poet of the old city, the city of our fathers, of the 1950s and later. Mr. Holder writes poems like notes in a diary. I found myself struck by their economy, wit, and urban melancholy... He has a voice unlike that of any of his contemporaries. Holder is a poet of the street and coffeehouses, an observer of the everyday. He writes of old Marxists, security guards and his relationship to his deceased father—themes of the common life. I am drawn to these poems as I am to the poetry of Philip Levine and the prose of James T. Farrell. But Holder’s poetry is deeper than that. He sees the world not for what it is, but on his own terms. He is living in the poem rather than in poetry.” ~ Sam Cornish, First Boston Poet Laureate

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OH Don't ,She Said..a poem/song project

( Preview and Purchase--click on pic) Oh Don’t, She Said ~ by Jennifer Matthews. Jennifer wrote this song after her friend and notable poet, Doug Holder, showed her his poem: “Oh don’t, she said, it’s cold.” After reading it, Jennifer felt inspired and heard a song in it. She had to change some of the words to make it work lyrically with the music, but she made sure to stay close to the original poem as much as possible. Jennifer played all the instruments on it and engineered it. It was mixed by Phil Greene at Normandy Sound, who worked with the likes of Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen and many, many other noted artists. Doug wrote it after a conversation he had with his mother while riding on a train to New York City. It is dedicated to her, Rita Holder. Genre: Rock: Acoustic Release Date: 2014

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So Spoke Penelope by Tino Villanueva

(Click on picture to order now!) "An intense poetic hovering over a situation of prolonged expectation....The poems in SO SPOKE PENELOPE are simply amazing, whether in the form of an apostrophe to the absent Odysseus or to the Gods, whether in a narrative past-tense mode or in the immediacy of the lived present, whether in the staccato of monosyllables or in the exuberance of unusual compounds, whether they employ Greek-feeling pentameter lines, alliteration, or anaphora. This poetic cycle shows that the whole range of human experience is contained in Penelope of Ithaca."—Werner Sollors

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New From Muddy River Books: Eating Grief at 3AM" by Doug Holder

(To order click on picture) “There is a sad, sweet nostalgia in Holder’s Eating Grief at 3 AM, a sense of loss and sadness for the places and the people who were a part of those scenes: the hunchback, the Tennessee Williams’ half lost blondes, the turbaned men and the discarded move nostalgically through life. Yet Holder finds something almost like beauty or knowledge in the abandoned warehouses with weeds crawling to the roof. He imagines when Mrs. Plant, an old art teacher, was an enigmatic young woman ‘feverishly taking notes about the paintings, a love note stuffed in a pocket of her winter coat.’ There are always dreams, even if never fulfilled. There is so often the sense of time passing, of letting go-- letting go of people, letting go of Harvard Square Theater and the Wursthaus, balms that seemed like they would always be there. And they are and always will be in Holder’s moving poems.” — Lyn Lifshin, Author of Cold Comfort (Black Sparrow Press) "

Elizabeth Lund Interviews Doug Holder-Founder of the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

(Click on Picture to order) "Starting with Allen Ginsberg and ending with Charlie Parker, Sam Cornish takes us on a whirlwind tour of some of the livelier segments of 1950s and early ’60s American culture. With non-stop energy, syncopated rhythms, and a fast pace that keeps you humming as you turn the pages, Cornish visits a wide array of writers, musicians, and films, stopping along the way to visit local poetry scenes and pay tribute to the homeless and poor. Calling on Jack Kerouac, Langston Hughes, Marlon Brando, Miles Davis and a host of others, Cornish makes us feel the excitement of those times, even as he and his companions absorb the complex and often disturbing history of what he aptly calls “My Young America.” — Martha Collins

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click on pic for more info..... (Eric Darton, (bestselling author of 'Divided We Stand: A Biography of The World Trade Center): ' "...a terrific publication..." Diane Lockward ( New Jersey Council of the Arts Fellow and publisher of Tarapin Books)--"You provide an invaluable service for poets." Rusty Barnes ( Night Train magazine) "Doug. I know your reviewers have made a difference to me and my work. Keep up the good work". J.L. Morin ( Lecturer at Boston University/ Library Review) "That's a lovely blog you've got there, Doug Holder." ( Sherill Tippins--"Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel.") " I love your introduction, and fervently hope that Somerville never meets anything like the Chelsea Hotel's fate. It's always a pleasure to read your blog -- even when I'm not in it!" Alan Kaufman ( Editor of the "Outlaw Bible of American Literature")-- " ...a terrific blog..." Perry Glasser--( Winner of the Gival Press Novel Award): " The blog is very impressive." Elizabeth Swados ( Tony Nominated Playwright, Guggenheim Award Winner ): "Thanks you so much for this review on your blog. It helps so much, not just in terms of getting people to know that it exists, but also makes me feel that someone has gotten what I have tried to do. I wish you the very best." Marguerite G. Bouvard, PhD-- Resident Scholar Women's Research Center-Brandeis University: " I love reading your blog. What a refreshing respite from the New York Times. Thanks for all you do for poetry." Ed Hamilton--author of "Legends of the Chelsea Hotel" commenting on Chelsea Hotel article: " That's a great piece. Thanks for sending the link along." Richard Moore-- Finalist/T.S.Eliot Prize " I have just read your wonderful interview of the wonderful Eric Greinke!" Steven Ford Brown (Former Director of Research for the George Plimpton Interview Series "The Writer in America"): " You did a great job with the Clayton Eshleman interview, especially the personal stuff. So much better than doing the dry talk about literary polemics." Celia Gilbert (Pushcart Prize in Poetry) "Doug thanks so much for that fine shout out. I'm delighted how you put it all together!" Karen Alkalay-Gut, PhD ( Professor of English-Tel Aviv University) "Doug, I enjoy your posts immensely" Lise Haines ( Writer-in-Residence, Emerson College-Boston) "I love your blog!" "( Elizabeth Searle- Executive Board/Pen New England) : "Like your blog. I like the interview with Rick Moody." Ploughshares Staff- " Everyone at Ploughshares is a big fan of your blog." Suzanne Wise (Publicity Director Poets House-NYC): "Thank you so much for this wonderfully thoughtful portrait of our new home! You really "get us" and you translate that understanding vividly. I love the way you talk about Stanley's ( Kunitz) giant dictionary as a relic from another age. We're glad to preserve such relics." Kathleen Bitetti ( Chief Curator Medicine Wheel Productions/ Former Director of the Artists Foundation--Boston.) " Love your interview with Marc Zegans...wonderful blog!"

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The Arts and Literature in Somerville, Mass.: Off the Shelf with Doug Holder

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The Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 13, 2010

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The Boston Globe: Poetic Healing at McLean Hospital

This was the lead article in the Living/Arts section of the Boston Globe. (Feb. 2000) It has to do with Doug Holder's poetry workshops at McLean Hospital and the history of this literary landmark. (Click on pic for full article)

(Click on picture to view) A Production of Somerville Community Access TV's show " Poet to Poet : Writer to Writer." Moderator: Gloria Mindock, Producer: Doug Holder, Director: Bill Barrell

"The Paris of New England" Interviews with Poets and Writers" by Doug Holder

( Click on pic to order this and other Ibbetson Press titles) Interviews with poets and writers from the Paris of New England Somerville, Mass. " Thank you for your interview book. I read it straight through last night and enjoyed it very much...So many good ideas in one book." Eric Greinke-- Presa Press "Very engrossing collection of Holder's interviews, with a wide range of writers about their lives and work. Included are Mike Basinski, Mark Doty, Robert Creeley, Ed Sanders, Hugh Fox, Robert K. Johnson, and Pagan Kennedy.-- Chiron Review

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Grolier Poetry Book Shop

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Poetry Workshops With Doug Holder

( Click on Picture for Doug Holder's website) Doug Holder has led poetry workshops, both for indviduals and groups for a decade now. Robert Olen Butler ( Pulitzer Prize Winner for Literature) wrote of Holder's work: " I've been greatly enjoying your poems. You have a major league talent, man." Available for individual or groups. Expert in gently helping the novice into poetry and the poetry scene. Reasonable Rates. Available for editing. Call 617-628-2313 for more information. Or email: dougholder@post.harvard.edu

Ibbetson Street Press

No One Dies at the Au Bon Pain by Doug Holder

Poems of Boston and Just Beyond: From The Back Bay to the Back Ward by Doug Holder

A poetry collection that deals with Boston, and Holder's experiences working on the psychiatric units at McLean Hospital

Of All the Meals I Had Before by Doug Holder

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The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel (To order click on picture)

A new poetry book by Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene Founder, Doug Holder. "I'm enjoying 'The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel' -- perfect poems, especially in that ambiance." Dan Tobin -- Director of Creative Writing--Emerson College-Boston, Mass./ " It is quintessential Holder& bristles with sardonic wit. Congratulations."-- Eric Grienke (founder of Presa Press) / " I finished "The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel'...greatly enjoyed the menagerie of characters and imperfect human beings I met along the way. Excellent work Doug!"-- Paul Steve Stone ( Creative Director W.B.Mason and the autthor of "Or So It Seems.") / "I am reminded in the pages of this collection of meeting, a year or two before her death, the artist Alice Neel, who painted gorgeously surreal ironic portraits of famous and ordinary people in the 1930's and 40's--and shivering as she looked me over. Doug Holder looks at the world through a similarly sharp and amused set of eyes...Rich nuggets of humor and wry reflection throughout this collection." Pamela Annas ( Asst. Dean of Humanities U/Mass Boston/Reviewer Midwest Book Review) “....particularly liked The Tunnel—a little masterpiece!” Kathleen Spivack ( Permanent Visiting Professor of Creative Writing/American Literature at the University of Paris) "I want to tell you this was just about the best chap I ever read, I absolutely DEVORED it..."--( Robin Stratton--Boston Literary Magazine) "An acclaimed Boston-area poet writes about characters who have captured his interest over the years -- a colonial dame with purple hair, a postal worker ready to be returned to his sender, J. Edgar Hoover's secret love -- in this skillfull collection of short, free form poems." (Perkins School of the Blind Website) Click on picture to access Cervena Barva Press

About Me

Doug Holder is the founder of the independent literary press Ibbetson Street. He teaches writing at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. He is the arts/editor of The Somerville News, and for the past twenty years has run poetry groups at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. His poetry and prose have appeared in the Bay State Banner, The Boston Globe, The Boston Globe Magazine, Rattle, Endicott Review, Long Island Quarterly, Toronto Quarterly and many others. He holds an M.A. in Literature from Harvard University.

Poems From The Left Bank: Somerville, Mass. by Doug Holder

( Click on picture to order) "The poems are full of life, witty and sympathetic and sharp all at once. And most of all, full of an engaged affection for the place and people. If Burns is Scotland's Bard, you are certainly Somerville's..." Kate Chadbourne, PhD ( Lecturer-Harvard University-Celtic Languages and Literature)

From The Paris of New England: Interviews with Poets and Writers" by Doug Holder

(Click on picture to order) Interviews by Doug Holder from the Paris of New England: Somerville, Mass. "I am impressed. A lot of great interviews compiled over the years."-- Brian Morrisey--Poesy Magazine / " A very engrossing read..."--Chiron Review / "Doug Holder knows how to ask important questions"--New Pages

Advertise with the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene.

Doug Holder founder says: "Reach a wide audience of poets, writers, editors and publishers, Have your ad linked to your site. The Boston area Small Press and Poetry Scene is well known in the small press community..." For information about rates, etc...email: dougholder@post.harvard.edu or call 617-628-2313